Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 12-12.
Screenshot of the Ancient Dragon's feature and action pattern lists
The infamous text bug strikes again, so I used the ratings to further differentiate between each group of skills.
The Ancient Dragon uses the first four skills while it has between 76% and 100% HP. The next three are used when it is
between 51% HP and 75% HP. The three skills with 7 rating are used when the Ancient Dragon is at 50% HP or lower.
Last, Devastate is a special skill I created that the Ancient Dragon uses every five turns, starting from the fifth turn.
It has the special property of doing more damage the later in the fight that it is used. Figure
12-13
contains the damage
formula box for Devastate.
Figure 12-13.
A screenshot of Devastate's damage formula box
We set it up so that the value of
$game_variables[27]
(I call it
turncount
) is multiplied by 0.20 and factored in to
the first part of the formula. To have a turn count variable, all we have to do is go into the Ancient Dragon's troop (after
creating it, of course) and add a troop event page with a “When the end of the turn” conditional that has a Turn span
(so it triggers once per turn). Then we use Control Variables to increase the value of
turncount
by 1. So, every five
turns, Devastate causes extra damage equal to three times the Ancient Dragon's MAT (so, 450). Basically, the battle is
a race to defeat the superboss before it can wipe out the party with a casting of Devastate. Of course, the less HP the
Ancient Dragon has, the stronger the skills that it uses.
